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een inaugurated in her founding and is experienced
proleptically in this age. This state is not experienced
fully until the age to come when the Church is fully
united to Jesus Christ, her bridegroom, in the new heavens
and the new earth. Though she is a spiritual whore,
she is also pure because she has been washed clean “in
the blood of the lamb” (Rev 7:14). This reality gives
believers great hope. The image of bride also reminds
the Church that they are cherished by Christ and find
their corporate identity in him.
The Church as Both Mother and Bride
These two feminine ecclesial images belong together.
Juxtaposing these images creates a paradoxical yet complementary
relationship that is demonstrated in three
ways. First, the maternal image describes the visible
Church on earth, while the nuptial image describes the
invisible Church awaiting her eschatological state. This
distinction between the visible and invisible Church
is attributed to Augustine—whose ecclesiology at this
point was shaped by the Donatist schism 56 —and more
fully developed by Calvin in opposition to the Roman
Catholic teaching that the Church is the one visible
organization that has descended from the apostles in a
continual line of succession .57
For Calvin, the Church is primarily a visible community
of believers as signified by the image of mother.
In fact, it was in the context of his discussion of the
Church as “the mother of the faithful through whom
one has rebirth and salvation” 58 that Calvin first used
the expression “visible Church” in a positive sense. 59 The
maternal image describes the visible Church; 60 she is a
“mixed assembly,” yet remains the exclusive site of God’s
covenantal blessings in Christ. 61 The motherhood of the
Church reflects the “social and visible Church existing
in the world,” 62 whose function is to bear and nourish
believers until the parousia.
Conversely, the nuptial metaphor describes the
invisible Church (the Church as God sees it) united
to her bridegroom, Jesus Christ. The distinction here is
primarily eschatological in that the invisible Church is
the Church that will come into being at the end of time
when God administers the final judgment and gathers
his bride to himself. In other words, the invisible
Church, as described in the nuptial metaphor, consists
only of the elect and is an object of hope in this earthly
life, while the visible Church, as described in the maternal
metaphor, is the concrete form of the Church on
earth.
This distinction, however, is not absolute because
the visible Church is a necessary expression of the invisible
Church; thus, the relationship is not one of opposition,
but one in which the visible is a sign and servant of
the invisible. 63 Christians are not to abandon the visible
Church under the guise of being members of an invisible
body. Stated from the perspective of the maternal
and nuptial metaphors for the Church, Christians are
not to abandon their mother, while at the same time
purporting to be united to the bridegroom.
Second, the image of the Church as mother is an
expression of her spatio-temporal reality, while the
nuptial image describes her eschatological glory. The
maternal image is a description of the Church’s spatiotemporal
existence on earth where she seeks to fulfill
her mission until the parousia (Matt 28:18-20). The
image portrays the Church as assembled in an historic
reality (situated in space and time) to do the work of the
ministry (Eph 4:12), namely, to live out the gospel in a
particular time-and space-bound culture.
Conversely, the metaphor of the Church as the bride
of Christ emphasizes the eschatological nature of the
Church. 64 In 2 Corinthians 11:1-4, for example, Paul
addresses the Corinthian community as a “pure virgin”
whom he, as father of the bride, has betrothed exclusively
to one husband, Jesus Christ, in order to present
her to him at the second coming. For Paul, the betrothal
was a past fact brought about by faith in Jesus Christ
that will not be constituted until the eschaton. The
Church, therefore, is the eschatological community 65
that experiences in Christ the beginning of the new age,
awaiting a future consummation, which “will not be the
manifestation and glorification of a perfection already
achieved in the Church, but radical cleansing and transformation.”
66
To conceptualize the Church as the bride of Christ
and the mother of believers is to maintain a tension
ubiquitous in the New Testament. The Church lives
between the times, where she experiences through faith
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